Roots:The Odyssey (the legend of the original sirens),
Babylon 5 ('Now it begins'), Das Boot, Badjelly the Witch (Maggie
Stables' Ruthley), Red Dwarf ('You mean everyone's dead?'), Asimov's
I, Robot and other novels (Pilot Azimendah's positronic brain, the
implied laws of robotics), Shelley's 'Ozymandias' (the Pilot's name), Doctor
Who Magazine's 1992 Winter Special comic strip 'Flashback' (temporal
creature enslaved to further time technology, freed by the Doctor). Vampire
legends, Holocaust concentration camp testimonies (the extermination of
Time Lords in compounds, 'showers' that are not as they seem), plus news
reports from the Hiroshima bombing of 1945 (Time Lords' telepathic impressions
burned into the walls of the Capitol).

Intertextuality: The Temperon, Calfadoria, and the Drudgers
come courtesy of the AudioVisual series with which Briggs was involved as an
author. The Knights of Velyshaa and Drudgers feature once more in Big Finish's
'Dalek Empire' audio series.

Fluffs: In episode 1 following an explosion Sylvester McCoy seems
to say 'I've lost my berries completely'. In episode 3 the word 'ship' is
pronounced by Colin Baker and Sarah Mowatt with an almost silent 'p'.

Goofs: Three gunshots are fired inside a U-Boat with no observations
made about the dangers of this to everyone on board. According to Big Finish's
promotional blurb, the seventh Doctor is from a time immediately
prior to 'Doctor Who', however the
interior TARDIS noise and console switches sound the same as for the sixth
Doctor's TARDIS in episode three. [perhaps he
was in the middle of changing rooms?]

'The only place you can find Temperon particles-' '-is inside a Temperon!'

Dialogue Triumphs: 'Nobody is putting you out of my misery'

'A hole that big in a person usually indicates a zero chance of survival.'

Sancroff's closing speech.

'Do you know, talking to yourself is often thought to be the first
sign of madness?' '-Ah yes, but a little madness helps, don't you think?'

'You're an android pilot with a spotless record. I'd trust you to fly
me naked through a cheese grater.'

'Where's a handy ventilation duct when you need one?'

Continuity: The fifth Doctor's unseen companions Tegan and Turlough
spend the adventure trapped inside the TARDIS. The sixth and seventh
Doctors are travelling alone. The fifth Doctor is taken from somewhere
between 'The Awakening' and 'Frontios'; the sixth Doctor from between the
end of his trial and, according to Big Finish's website 'Time and the Rani',
and the seventh Doctor from immediately prior to 'Doctor Who'.

On the unnamed planet, ion energy reveals the presence of alien life
[it is otherwise uninhabited]. Artron energy
reveals the presence of Time Lords and can also identify specific individuals,
even acknowledging different incarnations of the same [perhaps it has a
half-life]. Drudgers are hovering robots with mind scanners used to guard
prisoners such as Sancroff. Such mind scans render the subject unconscious
for around half an hour.

Coordinator Vansell is a member of the
Celestial Intervention Agency (a comment from a Chancellery Guard at the
story's end suggest that this is far from covert. The President (who's not
a CIA member) knows what the CIA are up to). Vansell is able to sustain a
temporal thought projection [i.e. shared consciousness] with humans (and
androids with positronic brains) across time and space. His TARDIS is an unregistered
modified Type 70. The 'current' Lord President is male. The Time Lords use a Time Chart, a monitoring device that maps events.

The Temperon, a 'distant cousin' of the Chronovores, is a legendary
creature known to the Time Lords and the Sirens of Time. It can travel
in time and space, and it might be inferred that this is also a creature
of Gallifreyan lore (the sixth and seventh Doctors quote the same rhyme
'the Temperon flows its way through the oceans of time, serene, sublime...'.
Its particles can be used in time experiments and can adhere to (and thus
travel the Vortex upon) TARDIS outer shells and even penetrate them. Temperons
may revise temporal anomalies and change the course of history retrospectively
(as one does at the end of this story).

The Sirens are another time-faring race who feed upon time distortions
and paradoxes. They cannot cause such disruption, but may only lure other
races to cause it and thus feed off the resulting chaos. It is implied
that this is not through lack of ability but, like the Guardians, they
cannot be seen to be interfering with the fabric of time. To answer their
call twice is to be enslaved to them eternally.

The star cruiser Edifice has a crew of 500 and supports 5000
passengers. It has reserve chemical fuel tanks and (it is implied) an internal
combustion [backup] engine. Its bulkheads are of Hadene LeStrade design.Aboard
is a conference of Galactic Wonders Commission delegates (of which the
Kurgon System is host) in order that the Kurgon Wonder (thought to be a
gaseous anomaly 215 million 'metrons' wide) can be entered as a Galactic
Wonder [see 'Death to the Daleks'].

The Knights of Velyshaa once had a large empire before they were toppled
in a great war against Earth in 3562. Their leader, Sancroff, was sentenced
to exile by the War Crimes Tribunal and would have been executed by Calfadorian
bio-assassins had the seventh Doctor not intervened. They thus achieved the Second
Empire which enslaved the Temperon, realised temporal technology and vanquished
the Time Lords. The Knights' temporal experiment to create a time travelling
spacecraft was halted by the Temperon, freezing them all in time until
the sixth Doctor freed them. Due to mutations from exposue to Temperon
particles they have become a parasitic race, requiring 'revitalisation'
from the life forces of other species to nourish the withered and decaying
bodies under their 'mediaeval' armour. Their weaponry inhibits regeneration.

The fifth Doctor is unable to prevent the sinking of the Lusitania.
Had he done so, a petty criminal by the name of Eric Charles Vincent would
have lived to kill Alexander Fleming in a botched robbery. With penicillin
having not been discovered, the world would have fallen prey to meningitis
and pneumonia in 1956, with the survivors never developing a space programme,
ultimately encountering and defeating the Second Velyshaan Empire.

Time distortion can be seen and travels in 'shards'. The Doctor has
a certain tolerance to it, as do the Sirens. TARDISes have a time
core [Vansell's does - in 'Sword of Orion' the Doctor mentions one in his as well].
Once again, the Doctor is mistaken for, and poses as, a delegate
at an intergalactic conference.

According to the sixth Doctor, each of his incarnations displays a
certain characteristic of his personality more strongly that the others. 'His'
is pragmatism.

Untelevised Adventures: The sixth Doctor recognises the Edifice's
construction, having seen similar ships. He (or one of his predecessors) knew Lastrade.

Location: An unnamed planet sometime after 3762; the U-Boat U-20
in the Atlantic Ocean (en route to New York from Liverpool) shortly before
the sinking of the Lusitania [7 May 1915], the star cruiser Edifice
in an unspecified time zone in the Kurgon System, Gallifrey (the Capitol,
including the Panopticon).

The Bottom Line: 'So this is how things turn out for me?'

The first of the long-anticipated audio dramas is something of a mixed
bag. While the fifth and sixth Doctors' segments maintain the listener's
interest, the all-important first (seventh Doctor's) segment is unfortunately
rather dull. And yet again we have a 'Gallifrey under siege' tale. Despite
having a rushed ending, 'The Sirens of Time' is a much better example of
what can be achieved with Doctor Who on audio that earlier radio
attempts. In all a highly entertaining experience. With three of the surviving
TV Doctors, new monsters and an arsenal of sound effects, there's something
here for everyone.

PLACING 'SIRENS'

There is sufficient evidence to support that each multi-Doctor
adventures 'belong' to the lattermost Doctor. However, 'The Sirens of
Time' cannot 'belong' to the seventh Doctor or the sixth in view of the events
in [the later audio tape] 'The Apocalypse Element' specifically with regard
to the death in that adventure of the President. And in light of the
later-produced stories 'Shada', 'Neverland',
and 'Zagreus', it is clear to us now that the Big Finish Gallifrey is set
within the eighth Doctor's time stream. This now means that all three of
the Doctors featured in 'The Sirens of Time' are taken to Gallifrey in
their own futures (and which now makes sense of Romana's cryptic comment in
'The Apocalypse Element' that the
sixth Doctor is the 'wrong' Doctor).